


Day One

by JadedQuill



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: Angst, Heroes: Volume 1, M/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-19
Updated: 2008-08-19
Packaged: 2018-11-06 12:36:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11036316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JadedQuill/pseuds/JadedQuill
Summary: Mohinder discovers the truth, and the world is no longer the same place.





	Day One

**Author's Note:**

> This is a songfic to Not As We by Alanis Morissette (from her newest album, Flavours of Entanglement). It's a gorgeous song, and as I was listening to it yesterday this fic just hit me, full force. You can listen to it over on YouTube [HERE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8-PevrFbIc). I highly recommend it. If you recognize it and aren't sure why, it's because it was in an episode of House (97 Seconds).

**Reborn and shivering  
Spat out on new terrain**

The laptop’s screen displayed a truth that shattered the very foundation of Mohinder Suresh’s reality. Ever since Dale, ever since those mysterious headaches, he had questioned, doubted, part of him even suspected; but he had never truly _believed_.

Here, now, with proof incontrovertible, he could only sit back and watch as his world crumbled and reformed around him.

He was suddenly treading in hitherto unknown territory. The landscape had changed, and so had he.

Here there be monsters.

**Unsure unconvincing  
This faint and shaky hour**

His hands wouldn’t stop trembling. He watched them twitch and vibrate with an almost detached air. Somewhere deep down he recognized the symptoms. He was in shock.

Shivering from an imagined chill, Mohinder wrapped himself in the thin motel sheets, eyes still locked on the picture of the real Zane Taylor. The one Sylar had murdered.

All this time, days and nights of intellectual stimulation, camaraderie and a growing closeness; it had all been nothing but a lie.

This entire time he had been flirting with death. He’d made friends with a serial killer; worse still, the one who had murdered his father.

A conversation about painful pasts and the concept of justice now felt like a mockery.

He’d been played for a fool.

**Day one day one start over again  
** Step one step one  
I'm barely making sense for now  
I'm faking it 'til I'm pseudo making it 

He didn’t get a wink of sleep all night. How could he, knowing that a vicious serial killer lurked on the other side of the too-thin motel wall?

It didn’t matter. Pure adrenaline would keep him going.

He couldn’t let on that he knew the truth. The instant he that he did, he would be a dead man.

Long hours of terrified silence and tortured contemplation had brought forth a plan. Surely it must be madness, true insanity, but what choice did he have? There wasn’t anyone who could possibly help him now. He would have to take things into his own hands.

He was responsible for Dale’s death. He’d led a killer right to her door. What little justice could be found, he would garner for her. He owed her that much at least, he owed it of his father as well. It was his duty alone to see this done.

He would smile and pretend. He would do what he must.

**From scratch begin again but this time I as I  
And not as we**

“How’s your headache?” It was all he could think to say.

He stared at the man he thought he knew, the same man who had haunted his dreams for weeks now. He saw him now through newly opened eyes, filed new assessments, and came to different conclusions. Smiles that once seemed shy now seemed evasive, deflecting, and deceitful; enthusiasm for his research now sinister instead of flattering.

“All better, actually.” _Sylar_ replied with a slightly dismissive wave of his hand – a hand that rightfully should have been coated with blood, that probably was not long ago – and a tiny smile – a smile of triumph, most likely. Another new ability conquered, mastered, stolen. “All I needed was a good night’s rest.”

Mohinder managed a nod, unable to reply with words of relief for his _friend’s_ release from pain. Sylar deserved every agonizing moment of it and more.

“Are you ok, Mohinder?”

“Hmmm?”

“You seem kind of off this morning.”

“Just worried about Sylar,” and wasn’t that the truth? “We should get going. I don’t want to stop until we get to New York.”

**Gun shy and quivering  
Timid without a hand**

Mohinder stared at the ingredients for the tea, both mundane and special as the kettle worked its way nearer to the boil. Ingredients he’d nearly thrown out when he’d come across them, unsure as to why his father would ever have purchased them in the first place. Now he was grateful. At least, he would be, if he could manage to go through with this.

He couldn’t believe he hadn’t been caught in the act yet.

He didn’t know what had possessed him to show Sylar the list. Something about his reaction felt off, and threatened his resolve. Shouldn’t Sylar have dropped the ruse the moment he’d gotten his filthy hands on those names? Was it simply greed? He thought he could deceive Mohinder long enough to get hundreds, thousands of more names?

_“You’ve given me hope.”_

Hope? Hope was as much of a lie as Zane was.

“Hope is great. What we need is caffeine.”

He poured the water.

**Feign brave with steel intent  
little and hardly here**

Even with a gun digging into the flesh of his forehead, Sylar still seemed to have the upper hand.

Mohinder struggled to keep a grasp on his resolve. Just a twitch of his finger and he could rid the world of a murderer… but then what did that make him? What if Sylar was telling the truth for once? What if his father had let this happen? What if, by pulling the trigger, he was no better?

He felt disconnected, flailing with no handholds to grasp. He was so far in over his head that he couldn’t even guess which way was up.

All he’d ever wanted was to be a good scientist, a good son, to live up to expectations he now knew he could never meet.

Research. Answers. Yes.

**Day one day one start over again  
** Step one step one  
with not much making sense just yet  
I'm faking it til I'm pseudo making it  
From scratch begin again but this time I as I  
And not as we 

Eureka.

Answers spill forth like blood from a wound he hasn’t yet found the courage to inflict.

This should be a glorious new beginning and yet… there is an ending waiting to take place

**Eyes wet toward  
Wide open frayed**

Sylar begs for redemption, salvation, forgiveness. His eyes stain with tears, and wash away any chance Mohinder might have offered it to him. The tears were just another lie, crocodile streams and just another game for a twisted mind.

The monster couldn’t possibly have any real emotions. If he did, then Mohinder wouldn’t be able to do what he must.

His hand closes on the gun once more.

**If God's taking bets  
I pray He wants to lose**

As he closes his eyes, as his finger closes on the trigger, Mohinder prays for some sort of escape.

He is doing the only thing he can, but he wishes with all his heart that there was another way. He doesn’t want to become a murderer, all the justification in the world doesn’t make it right.

Inertia hurtles him towards the inevitability of blood on his hands, he is out of control, unable to stop, helpless.

If there is some force for good in this world, surely it would want such a vile man to die. It’s his fate, his karma, but Mohinder wishes he weren’t the one to bring it about.

All he can see as he passes the point of no return is someone he’d connected with immediately and on such a deep and visceral level. It couldn’t have all been lies, not that connection, how could it? But what did that say about him? That he could feel such things for a man like this?

Maybe the next bullet should crack in his own skull.

**Day one day one start over again  
** Step one step one  
I'm barely making sense just yet  
I'm faking it til I'm pseudo making it  
From scratch begin again but this time I as I  
And not as we 

Mohinder sifts through the wreckage of his apartment.

He handles the glass as carefully as he can. Bits of wood and string, pushpins and clippings, fragments of a laptop destroyed and the tubing from a discarded IV. Little bits of his life sorted and filed and disposed of in a neat and orderly fashion.

A sword through the gut had done what he could not, that saga was over. He was be plagued by the shadow of a monster no more.

Time to start again.


End file.
